


The Last Round

by Taemanaku



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5012962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taemanaku/pseuds/Taemanaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the mummy apocalypse, and Marik is not exactly prepared. (Gift ficlet for ChaosRocket)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChaosRocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaosRocket/gifts).



> Ficlet for the Yu-Gi-Oh! It's Time to G-G-G-Gift! [Mini-Exchange] (YGOME15)
> 
> Somehow, I managed to get ChaosRocket's request, which I thought was hilarious. We had talked about this "mummy apocalypse" fic as a joke ages ago, and destiny now has it that I've written it. Or at least a small glimpse of it. Hope you enjoy.

They were surrounded.

Scores and scores of decaying, flaking, and shriveled bodies had them poised, back to back. Oh, and the bodies were moving, too. Which would be hellish, if they didn’t move like mechanical puppets with no eyes, no nose, and no sense of direction. Ugh, and the stench. Marik had already wretched once. He’d be pissed if he had to wretch again.

  
Against his back, he felt Bakura grunt.

  
“Bloody hell, what are they made of, titanium? I’ve loaded a whole round into this one and it’s still moving.”

  
“Try my gun. Point forty-five caliber, baby.”

  
Bakura grimaced. Either he didn’t believe the gun would help, or he hated the endearment. Likely both.

  
“We need to get out. They’re swarming us.”

  
“Sure, captain. Lead the way.”

  
Marik felt Bakura’s shoulders tense. There was no evident way out, and they both knew it. Marik briefly relished in acting like a petulant little child while mummies were attacking from all sides, and then gave himself a minute to sober up.

  
“We can only get out the main temple entrance,” he said. “The inner chamber is built like a prison. One way in, no other way out.”

  
“Thanks for that clarification, Marik. I wasn’t sure what my options were.”

  
Marik huffed, and then recoiled. One of the ugly things was closing in, and Marik had just fired his last round of shots. It swung an arm at him. Grinning, wide-mouthed, it swung its filthy wrappings across Marik’s face. He ducked. And then he heard the arm connect like a wooden block against Bakura’s head.

  
“Marik, what are you—“

  
When Bakura turned, Marik suppressed a laugh. Given any other circumstances, his expression would have been comical.

  
“I thought you had this side!”

“I ran out of shots!”

 

“For Ra’s sake, warn me, you idiot.”

  
Bakura wrestled with the disgusting being. Its old, dusty bones creaked and snapped under Bakura’s grip, and Marik felt a surge of pride. Why shouldn’t he? He always got joy out of watching his partner battle on his behalf. Bakura, narrow and sharp-angled though he was, got the mummy under a tight grip, and thrust it against a chamber column. The crack was resounding.

  
But right behind it were another twenty.

  
They were screwed.

  
There was no way they’d get out.

  
Marik closed his eyes for a second. Something about the absurdity of the situation reminded him why they were there in the first place.

  
Seto Kaiba.

  
That jackass.

  
He’d gotten them all in this mess.

  
Flashback to three months ago, and picture the one thing Kaiba loved the most: money, of course. And never-ending fame. So, in his quest for both, he decided to build another Kaibaland. But given the recent events with Atem and the millennium items, he had been inspired to build his next Kaibaland in Egypt. And not just any place in Egypt, but Luxor, Egypt. Back in the day, called Thebes, Egypt. Nicknamed the City of the Dead, Egypt.

  
Ishizu had warned him not to build in Egypt. The ground was sacred. There was much history in the sands. It was forbidden. All that jazz. It was cute that she’d thought she’d have power over the biggest megalomaniac in Japan. The thought of proving someone wrong in the existence of magic was probably more of a turn-on for Kaiba than the park itself.  
“Thanks for the advice, Ishizu. I’d love to hear more about it from my front office in Luxor.”

  
His team broke ground a few days later.

  
Honestly, Marik should have seen this coming. He had studied the scrolls and papyri about Thebes. There were spells and enchantments across the whole city, buried under the hot sand. All it took was defying any one of them, in the right way, at the right time, to unleash a wave of apocalyptic chaos across Egypt.

  
And that’s precisely what his excavation team had done, with now the rest of Egypt trying to keep up with the ensuing catastrophe.

  
He looked back at Bakura. He was met with a pair of brown eyes, and bright white hair disheveled across his face, like the color of fog rolling onto rich earth. It was a wonder they had stayed together for this many years. The pair of them, unbalanced. Childish, perhaps. Certainly unable to have a single conversation without sneers and reproachful looks.

  
But beneath the sneering tones and reproachful looks was something more whole than Marik had ever experienced. He felt safe. He felt that, no matter the circumstance, he would have a partner he could trust.

  
“You have any other rounds?” Bakura asked, out of breath, as he loaded his gun.

  
“No. I told you, I’m all out.”

  
Bakura scoffed. “You should have prepared better, Marik. What part of mummy apocalypse was not clear to you?”

  
Marik smiled.

  
“The part where I knew you’d take care of me?”

  
“For the love of Ra.” Bakura rolled his eyes.

  
But Bakura hid a small smile of his own. As he prepared to blast the next mummy into pieces, Marik joined him in the fight.

  
And somehow, he knew they’d win.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe we don't have all the answers. Maybe we're not even sure where we're going.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a birthday gift for Chaos! Hope she enjoys. I decided to continue down this path for one more chapter, and see where it takes me. I likely won't be continuing this fic, I'm just using this as a Thiefshipping outlet :)

It was unclear if there were survivors. 

Marik and Bakura had been fleeing across Luxor in an attempt to escape the mummies, while also looking for any scroll or text that could save them. This is where Marik relied on Bakura to save him with ancient Thief Bakurian knowledge of the sands, and where Bakura relied on Tomb Keeperish knowledge of the walls.

“I told you,” Bakura said, as he wrapped bandages across his bleeding forearm. “I don’t remember anything from my life in ancient Egypt. It’s like trying to remember a bad dream. I only kept all the parts that mattered. Vengeance, Yugi, all that.”

Marik placed his firearm in a corner of the room. They had found an abandoned home on the West Bank after escaping the temple. The battle had ended as victoriously as he’d predicted. They’d managed to cave in the temple walls by exploding the columns, trapping most of the mummies. The mummies were fast in close range combat, but they weren’t very fast at traversing miles at a time, which was a beautiful mechanism of this apocalypse. 

“That’s no excuse,” Marik said. “I suffered terrible rituals in my childhood, and created an entire other personality to forget childhood details. I really can’t be hard-pressed to remember what was written on the damned walls of the tomb I kept. You, on the other hand, managed to sit in a state of transience for three thousand years. Your memories should be perfectly preserved.”

Bakura rolled his eyes. This was the trouble of associating with Marik—Ra’s foul breath if he called it “dating,” the term used by impassioned millennials to describe fleeting association. Sure, they trusted each other but didn’t quite believe each other.

“We’re fucked then, aren’t we,” Bakura said flatly. Contrary to what Marik believed, he was never in a mood to argue. It exhausted him. “Now we’ll have to move to Croatia. Or Siberia, just to be sure.”

Marik was in the kitchen, moving pots and pans around. The clatter grated on Bakura’s nerves.

“Not interested in either, Bakura,” he yelled across the house. “I think we should stay here. Save the world. I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like to be a hero.”

“It feels disgusting. Like eating squid eyes. Believe me, it doesn’t clean your soul, or whatever these millennials think.”

“You’re forgetting,” Marik said, appearing in the doorway in a purple apron he’d likely found around the house, “that I’m a millennial.”

The words, “you’re better than most,” dried in Bakura’s throat. Instead, he got up and joined Marik in the kitchen. The home was threadbare. A bag of fava beans was on the counter. Marik was flipping across a small smartphone screen. Knowing him, he was trying to Google how to make beans. Given that he’d lived in Egypt his whole life, it was pathetic that he still couldn’t cook. Granted, Bakura only knew how to gut fish and start fires with flint and dried sticks, so it would be mighty ironic for him to start flinging mud now.

“Alright, so I’ll need a pan. Some oil,” Marik muttered. He glanced up at Bakura. “Good, you’re here. Make yourself useful. Shell the beans.”

Bakura was too hungry to argue. He had to stop a few times to re-roll his bandages to save them from dripping blood into the skillet. Marik was like a bouncing child, uncontained. He ripped through the household, taking stock of food and supplies, and after they’d prepared the beans, talked with his mouth full about their options.

“I think we should start with Kaibaland. We don’t understand the spell yet, so we’ll have to figure out what triggered these bastard mummies to rise in the first place.”  
Bakura ate the overcooked beans silently. 

“Once we understand that, we can start looking for counter-spells. The West Bank was the original resting place of the dead, so we’ll need to look there, but we’re also bound to run into more mummies as they keep rising. We’ll need more firearms. Sadly, the developed part of Luxor is on the East Bank, so we’ll have to make a few trips—“

Finally, Bakura interrupted with, “No.”

Marik looked at him, perplexed. “I’m sorry, no, what? You don’t think we need to head back to the East Bank?"

“No, I’m not going to participate in looking for counter-spells,” Bakura said. “I’m not interested in solving this problem.”

He continued eating, ignoring the deadly silence and deadlier look Marik was giving him. He didn’t need to justify himself. He’d participated in enough problems. He’d started and solved them. He’d had multiple lifetimes of conflict, and getting involved in something as stupid as Kaiba’s misfortune with magic wasn’t going to fit with Bakura’s idea of living out a second lifetime in peace.

“Where are you going, then?” Marik asked. His food was now untouched. 

Bakura frowned. “I don’t know yet. Anywhere else. We’ll pack up tonight and head out early tomorrow, before the mummies find us.”

Marik laughed, humorlessly. “We need to do what? I’m staying here.”

This behavior continued to astonish Bakura. “Why? What’s so precious out here that you’d be willing to risk both of our lives? Especially my life, my second chance to live. You’d have me dying young again?”

Marik stood up. He gathered his plate and utensils, and strode toward the kitchen. He muttered, “I’ve got more than myself to think of.” 

This was completely unlike Marik. When they’d met, Bakura believed they were the same. Both selfish, determined, unwilling to compromise on anything. Bakura finished his food, and left the dirty plates on the dining table. Before Marik could return to the room, he went to the balcony, and looked out across the bank for answers.

It was hard to distinguish the Nile from time. If he ignored the new hotels and gorgeous tourist attractions, and looked only at the water with its reeds and moonlight, he lost all sense of time. He was in ancient Egypt, gathering his will to defeat the Pharaoh. It was the last night of his life, and he wondered belatedly if something lay beyond this world.   
It was the night before he left Marik, for the second, or maybe third time, but this time it was for good. 

The wind rushed at him, slapping his face. His tongue felt acrid in his mouth. He tried to imagine life without Marik. No association with the brat. Gods, he was so stubborn. What could be holding him to this desolate patch of the world? There were so many wars here, so much anger, and destruction. 

But then Bakura remembered. Isis. And Rishid. He had more than himself to think of. Were they still alive?

He wasn’t sure how long he stood at the balcony, but it got cold, and he finally left. He made his way to the single bedroom, where a small candle was lit on the nightstand, and Marik slept in the double bed. Marik’s face was so young. Sometimes Bakura felt eons older than him. And sometimes he was the one who felt younger. He got into the bed, borrowing the blankets.

Marik murmured something, shifting. 

“What’s that?” Bakura muttered.

“Don’t,” Marik said, maybe consciously, maybe unconsciously.

Bakura took his hand, under the blankets, and squeezed it. Even if he had to stay here long enough to find Isis, and find Rishid, and then maybe still long enough to convince Marik it wasn’t worth being a hero, he would stay.

“I won’t,” he replied.


End file.
